


Trusting Nature

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2752241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Men lie.  Men cheat. Men are dicks.  He just sorta hoped Matt would be different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trusting Nature

John's always thought of himself as a trusting kind of guy. Lucy might not agree, and would probably point to his "stalking" of her and her dates as proof of his suspicious nature. But he thinks Holly might be on his side. He doesn't doubt that Lucy can take care of herself, and he never doubted Holly for a minute.

It's men that are the problem. 

He watches out for Lucy because there are men out there who are bigger and stronger than she is no matter how many ju-jitsu lessons she takes. Because there are men out there who will tell her whatever they think she wants to hear if it gets them what they want. John might not be that kind of man, but he's hauled in enough of the assholes who are. He trusts his daughter and he trusted his wife, but experience has taught him not to trust men.

Men lie. Men cheat. Men are dicks.

He just sorta hoped Matt would be different. 

John drums his fingers on the arm of the chair and forces himself not to look at the clock. It could be minutes or hours – it feels like fucking days – before he hears the front door finally open.

"Hey, I'm home," Matt calls out. John hears the clunk of his backpack hitting the hardwood, followed quickly by his shoes. It's quiet enough that he can even hear the slither of Matt's parka as she shrugs it from his shoulders, the soft padding of his feet as he makes his way down the hall. He only looks up when Matt reaches the living room and cocks his head. "Hey, what are you doing sitting in the dark?" 

John lifts a shoulder. He's never been good at the whole talking thing – Holly might agree that he's trusting guy, but she'd have worlds to say on his lack of communication skills – and he sure as hell can't seem to force any words out now.

Matt shakes his head, crosses the room to crawl into his lap. "Pretty sure we paid the electricity bill," he says as he reaches past John to flick on the lamp, and John blinks at the sudden illumination. He twists his head to the side, closes his eyes. If that takes his gaze away from Matt, maybe that's all the better.

"Where were you?" he asks, proud of how placid his voice sounds. How calm. 

"Oh, hey, yeah. Sorry about that," Matt says. 

John flinches when Matt rests his hands on his shoulders, Matt's fingertips chilly against the side of his neck. If he could make the right words come, he would chew out the kid for not wearing his gloves in this weather, and lecture him about getting better ones if he swore that he had. And then Matt would slide his hands under John's sweater to warm them up, and John would shiver but pull the kid closer and slant their lips together, and eventually they'd both be so hot they wouldn't need clothes at all. John can see it all, behind his closed eyelids, and he presses his lips together before he can say the wrong thing. Which right now would be anything at all. 

"I told you how Skater was having that issue with his registry, right?" Matt continues, and if the kid is aware of the tension in John's shoulders he doesn't give any sign of it. John nods his head in something like acquiescence, feels Matt settle more firmly on his lap and John twitches with the desire to rise, to put some distance between them. His hands have landed on Matt's hips, though, and he can feel the cold radiating off the kid's body even there. His thumbs find an inch of skin where Matt's T-shirt has ridden up and he can't help rubbing the pads of his fingers over that tiny slice of flesh.

"Well," Matt says, "I don't know what the fuck he did, but it took me an hour just to find the problem never mind start working on it. I barely scratched the surface, I'm gonna have to go back at least a few more times, it's a mess. So yeah, I was stuck there a lot longer than I thought. Did you eat? Because I'm starving. We could order pizza."

John looks at him then, and whatever Matt sees on his face makes the kid frown and lean back on his heels.

"Or Thai. Or… nothing, you know, if you're not into… I could make soup!"

John clenches his hands on Matt's hips before he forces himself to relax. "Whatever you want, kid."

He lets Matt crawl off him to find the take-out menus, and doesn't tell the kid that he already called Skater's place two hours ago and knows that Matt was never there.

* * *

It's another three days before he makes the decision to follow Matt, and two more before he actually has the balls to implement it.

He feels guilty as he eases the car slowly down the street, a half block away from where Matt plods along with his hands tucked under his armpits and his backpack slung over one shoulder. He's spent the past five days struggling to find the words to just ask the kid where he's been going – who he's been seeing – and they won't come. Because it's been good having Matt in his life, better than he ever imagined it could be, and maybe he just doesn't want to hear that all those doubts that kept them apart in the first few months were justified. Doesn't want to hear Matt tell him that in the end he's too old, too broken down, too fucked up. So he needs to see it with his own two eyes. If he can see that Matt has found someone else then maybe he'll have the guts to break it off with the kid himself. Not to move on, because… because Matt owns his heart, just as much as Holly ever did. There won't ever be anyone else.

He pulls over when he sees Matt duck into a building halfway down the block, and feels only slightly uncomfortable when he pulls the portable light out of the dash and sets it on the hood to cover his illegal parking job. The air is bracing, slicing at his exposed skin, and he wishes he'd thought to remember a hat as he pushes his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and strides purposefully toward the store. 

He hesitates as the neon sign comes into view, grits his teeth. A gym, and of course that makes sense. Matt has a type after all, just as he does. Of course the kid would want someone whose muscles don't ease toward flab if he takes a day or three off from his workout regimen, someone whose stomach is tight and who doesn't grunt when getting up from the sofa after he's been sitting in one position too long. Someone who doesn't bitch and rub at his sore knee. Someone who doesn't wince when Matt puts too much pressure on his shoulder when he's writhing on top of him, who has to ease up and switch position in order to ease his lover's pain.

Part of him wants to burst through the doors, confront Matt and his new boyfriend, cause a fucking scene. But he takes a breath and instead edges toward the oversize windows that look into the workout room. It's easy enough to sidle behind the delivery van on the corner, to angle his head to see the room.

It takes a while before Matt finally comes into view, and John blows on his hands and tries to keep up his body warmth while he waits, eyeing all the fancy equipment and the gym bunnies distastefully. When Matt finally steps into the room he is wearing sloppy sweatpants and a T-shirt with the gym name emblazoned on the front, and his partner is… John cocks his head. His partner is a woman. 

A slim, petite woman with frizzy blonde hair.

A small, unobtrusive woman who patiently shows him how to work some kind of elaborate machine covered with ropes and pulleys before patting him on the shoulder and moving on to assist a chubby guy wearing entirely too much spandex. 

John flops back onto the side of the van, bangs his head repeatedly against the panels. 

He is an idiot.

He thinks back over the past few weeks, to the play of his fingers over Matt's skin. And yeah, there has been a subtle difference in Matt's biceps when he grips him there, a little more firmness to his abs. If he hadn't been so caught up in such a ridiculous spiral of doubt and mistrust, he might have realized that his subtle hints about cardio and weight training had taken root. Maybe Matt wanted to surprise him. John lifts his head, peeks again into the brightly lit workout room. His lips quirk as he watches Matt get tangled in one of the pulleys, limbs twisting awkwardly until he finally has to call out for rescue from the little blonde. Or maybe Matt just didn't want him to witness… that. 

John can relate. He still remembers puking three quarters of the way around the track during his first workout at the academy.

He shakes his head and pushes off from the van, shuffles quickly back to the car. He pulls into traffic calling himself ten times a fool, vows to make amends for his lack of faith with Matt tonight and every night… even if the kid doesn't know why. The only advantage here is that Matt will never have to know the full extent of the stupidity of the man he married. 

He'll start by making Matt's favourite dinner tonight. But first, he has a pit-stop to make.

* * *

The television is on mute and John is trying to read – pretending to read – when he finally hears Matt's key in the lock.

"Hey, I'm home!" Matt yells, and John sets the paper aside with relief, rises from the chair when he hears Matt's backpack clunk onto the floor. He reaches the hallway by the time Matt's toeing off his shoes, strides purposefully down the corridor so that he's at Matt's side by the time the kid is tossing his coat on the peg. Matt grins at him, but the grin turns to confusion when John fists a hand in Matt's thin T-shirt and tugs him forward, sending the kid stumbling into his chest with a yelp of surprise that John swallows eagerly. It doesn't take long for Matt to get with the program, leaning into his chest and palming one hand at the nape of John's neck to keep him in place.

His fingers are cold.

John only releases him reluctantly, leans back to reach blindly onto the oak table for the item he purchased on the way home and press them into Matt's palm. He watches Matt glance down, his brows knit in confusion before he lifts his head and shakes his hair out of his eyes. "Okay?"

"Your hands are cold," John says. "Jesus kid, you gotta wear gloves in this weather. It's twenty fucking below out there."

Matt lifts his head and raises a brow – John realizes he may have overestimated the temperature, which does not negate the fact that it's fucking cold – and fingers the soft leather of the gloves. His brow is still furrowed, and he reaches across to the coat peg to dig into the pocket of his jacket. "Thanks," he says, "but I do have these."

The mittens are pale blue, soft and fuzzy with wear and embellished with googly eyes and a long red tongue. John squints in the low light of the hall. They're bears, he thinks. Or possibly monkeys. He only barely stops himself from rolling his eyes. "You may want something that doesn't make you look like a twelve year schoolboy," he says dryly.

"Hey," Matt protests, "these are ironic—"

"Don't even start with ironic," John interrupts gruffly. He plucks the offending mittens from Matt's hand and unceremoniously chucks them toward the door, laughs at the shocked expression on Matt's face and presses a finger at the bottom of his chin to ease his closed mouth shut. "Leather gloves," he says softly. "Warm. Wear them."

"Those are my… you can't just throw them down the…"

"Can," John says. "Did."

Matt huffs indignantly, and John thinks this isn't the last he'll hear of the mitten versus gloves debate. But Matt always does know when to pick his battles, so he merely tosses the new gloves toward the table and steps back into John's space, long fingers plucking at the hem of his sweater. "I don't really need gloves anyway," Matt says.

John tenses at what he knows is coming, but he still shivers when Matt pushes up at the hem and slides his cold hands across his skin. His stomach clenches and Matt chuckles – somewhat maliciously, John thinks – but that doesn't stop him from pulling Matt closer and letting the kid smooth chilly palms up to his chest. When Matt's questing finger brushes tentatively across his nipple he pushes a hand beneath the fall of Matt's hair at his neck and urges him toward his lips.

By the time he's got Matt pushed against the wall and moaning into his mouth, they are indeed too hot for clothes.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's smallfandomfest community for the prompt "Matt gets a gym membership"


End file.
